Lifetime occupational and recreational physical activity and risk of lymphoma subtypes. Results from the European Epilymph case-control study.

Physical activity is known to convey protection against several cancers. However, results on the risk of lymphoma overall and its subtypes have been inconsistent. The aim of this study was to investigate occupational and recreational physical activity in relation to risk of lymphoma subtypes adjusting for established occupational risk factors. We applied standardized tools to assess energy expenditure at work and in recreational physical activities to the questionnaire information on lifetime work and exercise history in 1117 lymphoma cases, including Hodgkin lymphoma, and B-cell (including chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and multiple myeloma) and T-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) subtypes, and 1207 controls who took part in the multicentre European EpiLymph case-control study. We calculated the risk of lymphoma (all subtypes), B-cell NHL and its most represented subtypes, and Hodgkin's lymphoma (all subtypes) associated with weekly average Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET-hours/week) and cumulative MET-hours of lifetime recreational, occupational, and total physical activity, with unconditional logistic regression and polytomous regression analysis adjusting by age, centre, sex, education, body mass index, history of farm work and solvent use. We observed an inverse association of occupational, and total physical activity with risk of lymphoma (all subtypes), and B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among women, and an upward trend in risk of Hodgkin's lymphoma with recreational and total physical activity among men, for which we cannot exclude chance or bias. Our results suggest no effect of overall physical activity on risk of lymphoma and its subtypes.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest Mariagrazia Zucca reports was provided by EpiLymph paper on physical activity. Mariagrazia Zucca reports a relationship with EpiLymph paper on physical activity that includes: board membership. Mariagrazia Zucca has patent pending to Mariagrazia Zucca. Pierluigi Cocco reports financial support was provided by Italian Association for Cancer Research. Pierluigi Cocco reports a relationship with Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research that includes: funding grants. Marc Maynadie reports a relationship with Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc that includes: funding grants. The remaining authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)